Municipal governments collect tree and shrub leaves and other yard debris in the fall. This collection is needed because burning of leaves is generally prohibited to improve air quality. Collection, of leaves and other yard debris, is separated, from garbage and general household trash, for composting. By composting yard debris, landfill space is reserved for trash that is not suitable for composting.
Tree leaves and other yard debris are bagged by homeowners for collection in some communities. Such bagging by individuals is an extremely burdensome chore in the fall of the year when trees loose their leaves over a period of a few weeks. The bags are expensive. Raking leaves and stuffing them into bags is hard work and beyond the ability of many older individuals.
The cost and effort required by individuals to bag leaves and yard trash is eliminated in some communities by providing a bulk pickup of such material. When using a bulk pickup system, a homeowner rakes tree leaves and other yard debris onto the side of the street. Generally the leaves and other yard materials are deposited in a windrow adjacent to or on the edge of the street. A vehicle with a collection bin and a vacuum pickup sucks up the leaves and yard debris and holds these materials in the bin. The vacuum pickup tubes are generally manipulated manually while gathering leaves and other material. The bin tends to fill rapidly with leaves that are not significantly compressed. When the bin is full, the machine stops gathering leaves and moves to a disposal site or a transfer station where the bin is unloaded. During transport, unloading and return to the pickup area, the machine is not sucking up leaves and other plant material. This necessary bin unloading procedure can substantially reduce the quantity of leaves and other material gathered during a day.
A number of low capacity leaf and grass clippings bagger attachments have been designed for use on lawn mowing machines. An auger is employed by some of these attachments to feed material into a bag and compress the material in the bag. These mowing machines have limited capacity to pick up leaves. They are slow and frequently plug with leaves. Once the bag is full the mowing machine is stopped, the operator dismounts from the machine, closes the bag manually, removes the filled bag from the machine, mounts an empty bag in position to be filled and then returns to the operator station to resume the bagging operation.
Stationary bagging machines are also used to bag leaves and other plant material. These machines generally have a hopper that feeds leaves into a compression chamber by gravity. Material that is to be bagged is deposited in the hopper manually or by a suitable conveyor.
The bagger attachments for lawnmowing machines and the stationary bagging machines fill relatively small bags. The small bags are handled manually after they are filled. The two major drawbacks of these bagging systems is the cost of the bags and the fact that the systems are very labor intensive.
Attempts have been made to bale leaves with agricultural hay balers. These attempts have been unsuccessful. Leaves are difficult to pick up with baler pickup assemblies because they do not hold together with each other like long stems of hay. Leaves are also difficult to hold together in a bale due to the absence of long stems.